Tag: Dani Collins

Review: Dani Collins’s THE PROSPECTOR’S ONLY PROSPECT

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Prospector's_Only_ProspectI am, by nature, a cautious reader…I’m reluctant to try new authors, new foods, new settings, I like the tried and true. I’m cautious about beloved authors who migrate to new genres (please come back, Sarah Morgan and Molly O’Keefe), while I’d never begrudge a writer trying on new wings. So it was with a shaky heart I noted one of my favourite HP writers wrote a historical romance; “at least it’s still a romance,” I thought self-soothingly. And yet, I was delighted to realize I didn’t miss Collins HP because I was sucked in by The Prospector’s Only Prospect (not sure about the title, though), stayed up too late reading, spent the day half-into my responsibilities half-with-an-eye on the clock “When can I read my book again?”

To get us started and evidence how un-HP-like Collins has ventured, I offer you the blurbish bits:

After eight days in a cramped stagecoach, divorcée Marigold Davis already regrets her decision to come to Denver City to marry. She certainly didn’t realize she’d signed up for mosquitoes, mud, and scores of rough men eyeing her like a hot meal on a cold day. But with her life in Kansas all but incinerated, Marigold needs a husband. Even if she’s not the bride that gold prospector Virgil Gardner is expecting…

Virgil Gardner has a reputation as a grumpy hard-ass, and he’s fine with it. He’s also no fool—this is not the woman he agreed to marry. It takes a tough-as-nails woman to survive the harshness of a Rocky Mountain gold claim, and this whiskey-eyed, gentle beauty is certainly not the type. Now it’s just a matter of how quickly she’ll quit so he can find a wife who will stick. Someone who can care for the only thing he values even more than gold–his children.

But Marigold isn’t about to give in. Cramped in a one-room shack. Berry picking turned into a bear escape. Or cooking for an entire crew of bottomless pits. She’s got more grit than most. And just when Virgil starts to realize his replacement bride might be the treasure he’s been looking for, an unannounced guest arrives…to change everything. (more…)

Dani Collins’s A HIDDEN HEIR TO REDEEM HIM

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Hidden_Heir_to_Redeem_HimAfter an excess of mystery-reading, I was ready for some romance. And you can’t get more of a romance-concentration than in an HP. And Dani Collins being one of my favourite HP authors, I was set. I stayed up way past my bed-time to finish A Hidden Heir To Redeem Him and it wasn’t because it blew me away. Rather, there’s something so viscerally satisfying in the HP that even a less-than-stellar effort from a favourite author keeps you glued to the page. Is it over-the-top-ness? Is it every wish-fulfillment fantasy for safety and devotion? Is it pure escapism and thus a respite from this surreal, frightening year? Probably all of the above. Hidden Heir hit the notes, but Collins didn’t always hit them as perfectly as her Cinderella’s Royal Seduction, which is as perfect an HP as Sarah Morgan’s Playing By the Greek’s Rules or Lynne Graham’s The Greek’s Chosen Wife. These three titles distill the best of the HP. They’re tightly focus on the couple’s relationship. A Hidden Heir, on the other hand, lost its way when the hero’s and heroine’s painful backgrounds overwhelmed their romance.
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MINI-REVIEW: Dani Collins’s CINDERELLA’S ROYAL SEDUCTION

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Cinderella's_Royal_SeductionDani Collins’s Cinderella’s Royal Seduction is a fairy-tale retelling with a heroine replete with temper and a prince who exhibits alpha-diminishing humility. I loved it. It’s funny, heartfelt, and possessed of baroque love scenes. The HP’s connection to fairy tale is well recorded; so much so that I was afraid, on first opening Cinderella’s Royal Seduction, it would be trite, tired, formulaic. What I found was anything but. It was delightful, fun, fresh. Much of this may be attributed to Collins’s heroine and hero characterization and how it allows the narrative to subsume the fairy tale, instead of being ruled by it.

Cassiopeia “Sopi” (the worst thing about the novel is the poor heroine’s diminutive) Brodeur is at the housekeeping beck and call of her evil stepmother and sisters at Lonely Lake Spa in the Canadian Rockies, once her beloved mother’s business-child. Though run-down and in constant need of repair, it’s beautifully situated and lovingly cared for by Sopi. Her evil stepmother machinates a visit from Rhys Charlemaine, Prince of Verina, second-in-line to the throne and, unbeknownst to nasty stepmom, horrid daughters, and Sopi herself, due to his brother’s, the king’s, cancer diagnosis, in need of a wife to provide the stability of an heir to their kingdom.  (more…)

MINI-REVIEW: Dani Collins’s THE MAID’S SPANISH SECRET

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Maid's_Spanish_SecretAfter a work-week from hell, a well-done HP is exactly what can set the mood right and tilt the world back towards HEA in one intense, short take. Dani Collins, a fellow-Canuck, is becoming one of my favourite HP authors. With category romance out of its Golden Age, and taking one step forward and two back trying to remake itself, the good ole HP, as practised by Collins, Smart, Hayward, maybe Hewitt, still stands sentinel to the category virtues.

Collins’s The Maid’s Spanish Secret is open to Romancelandia’s cognoscenti’s derision: secret baby! virginal heroine! emotionally-stunted bazillionaire hero! exotic locales! (Saskatchewan’s Northern Lights!) yet Collins manages to make it fresh, endearing, intense, with tongue-in-cheek banter and wit.

On a European vacation, Poppy Harris, aspiring photographer, loses her money and takes a job as a maid for a Spanish billionaire’s mother. Said billionaire, Rico Montero, the day his arranged-marriage fiancée breaks their engagement, gives in to the attraction he’s had for the maid and the maid for him and they make passionate love in the solarium. (more…)

MINI-REVIEW: Dani Collins’s INNOCENT’S NINE-MONTH SCANDAL

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Innocent's_9-Month_ScandalMy dear friend “Shallow Reader,” loves Dani Collins and that’s rec enough for me. After the intensity of Griffiths’s Stranger Diaries and especially its Victorian-gothic length, I was happy to read a snappy category romance. Snap it did, Ms Collins’s Innocent’s Nine-Month Scandal, with my favourite kind of HP heroine, kind, generous, plain-Jane, funny, and a deliciously broody hero, not too annoyingly domineering, but definitely in the strong, caretaker arena. 

Collins’s plot was HP-fare ludicrous. Rozalia Toth is in Budapest looking to find the mate to her grandmother’s earring, given to grammy, in troth, by her true-love during what may be (Collins doesn’t make this explicit) the uprising of ’56? Sadly, gram’s true-love succumbed in the riots and she travelled to America, pregnant and destitute, where she made a marriage-of-convenience with one Benedick Barsi. As grammy is now getting on, Rozalia wants to give her the chance to see the earrings as a pair. Many convoluted family connections are discussed between hero and heroine, but I admit I didn’t give them much attention. Plot isn’t why one reads an HP. (more…)